HOME & GARDEN: New Gahan home in Blyth stirred interest within community

BY SHAWN LOUGHLIN

One of Blyth’s most hotly-anticipated and obsessively-watched construction projects is now a beautiful, yet unorthodox home for the Gahan family, finished just in time for Christmas of 2021.

 

Joe Gahan, Megan Lee-Gahan and their children plotted their return to Blyth in the early part of the decade, with Megan returning to the village in which she was raised after meeting her husband and starting a family in Toronto. The plan was to renovate the house she’d grown up in on Drummond Street with a backyard that slopes down dramatically towards what is now the Goderich-to-Guelph Rail Trail (G2G).

 

Plans, however, would change several times between then and where the family ended up in that holiday season of 2022, which, by the way, fulfilled a promise Megan made to doubters. She insisted they would be in the house by Christmas and, sure enough, they were granted occupancy on Dec. 22 of 2021, just a few days before her self-imposed deadline.

 

Once the couple decided to build a new house on the property, there were a few guidelines they had to adhere to, including building the new house in the exact footprint of the old one. This also enabled the family to hook into geothermal heating, which now heats the concrete floors throughout the home.

 

Megan went to school for home design, though now she works as a project manager. However, she was able to put that education and passion to work for her own family’s home. Those early plans, however, were for a very traditional, stick-built home with which everyone in Huron County should be familiar. 

 

The plans were ready and where there was a will there was a way... in March of 2020. It wasn’t long before everything changed. The issuing of building permits ground to a halt and many construction materials, most notably lumber, saw their prices skyrocket as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and related supply chain issues.

 

They finally received their permits that following September and quickly found that, to build the house of their dreams, it was going to cost three or four times what it would have before the onset of the pandemic. 

 

They soldiered on with some of the preliminary work and when they went to order the concrete needed for the foundation, they found that the price of concrete had not moved like its fellow building materials. As Megan and Joe began to reimagine the house, incorporating more and more concrete to achieve cost efficiency, it soon became the basis for the house. They were going to build a concrete house, accented with wood and shiplap and large windows.

 

Houses like the ones the Gahans eventually ended up building are commonplace in Ireland, Joe’s homeland, but are relatively unique in North America, Megan said. And while the house isn’t quite a recognized Passive House with all of the standards and rules involved, it follows many of the same principles. There is no forced-air heating and much of the heating and cooling is done from the sun, the windows, the orientation of the house and concrete’s ability to retain temperature. 

 

Megan said all of the large windows were designed specifically to catch as much wind as possible and bring it into the house. So, on summer nights, for example, they will open the windows through the night to bring in the cool air and then close them in the morning, trapping all of that residual cool air in the house to make life inside comfortable throughout the day.

 

Construction on the house began in November of 2020. Because of the nature of the home, using large concrete slabs, it had to be completed one floor at a time. 

 

It began to get too cold and the family had to use insulating tarp to cover up the concrete work that had been done in the home. From there, they spent the winter in Megan’s parents’ basement next door or in their bunky, a small, 10-by-10-foot cabin near the bottom of their backyard hill and adjacent to the G2G. Living in there with their children and pets was hard, she admits, but it only made her appreciate the house of their dreams that much more. 

 

As construction dragged on, the house took on almost mythical status within the community, as daily walkers and drivers-by would keep tabs on the progression of the unorthodox build. People were always keen to ask questions about the nature of the house, so, when it was completed, Megan and Joe guided more than a few tours for curious community members and even one of their regular couriers. He had delivered so many building materials to the address, he said, that, once it was completed, he had to see inside.

 

Work resumed on April 11 of 2021 and they were granted occupancy on Dec. 22. The numbers 11 and 21 have significance in the Gahan family, so Megan thought it was rather important that those numbers appeared in the timeline of such an important shift for their family.

 

They completed much of the house quickly, she said, with the help of Amish work crews and groups of friends. However, the last items to arrive were the windows and, because of the design, they were no small element. For a time they covered the openings with tarp to keep the elements out, but, when the material finally did arrive, Megan, Joe and their team worked what felt like around the clock to get them in and avoid another winter out in the bunky.

 

Sure enough, they were in just before Christmas, just like Megan said they would be.

 

Now, Megan says she can’t imagine living anywhere else and looks back on the initial design and thinks of how different life might have been had it not been for the pandemic. There will always be “forever projects” in the house that need to be completed, tweaked or changed, but, as things stand now, the family is happy in their home. 

 

And, this is a long-term proposal, as they designed the main floor to be entirely accessible and easily adapted to include amenities for older patrons (seemingly Joe and Megan in several decades) so they will be able to live in the home for the rest of their lives.